Restful sleep being important for the maintenance of good health is facilitated by proper sleeping posture. Most individuals sleep on their side (“side sleepers”) rather than their back or stomach. Frequently side sleepers experience discomfort in the neck, shoulder, arm, back and hips, any of which can lead to tossing and turning and misalignment of the spine which in turn interferes with proper sleep posture and prevents restful sleep. It is well known that overly tired individuals may fall asleep and assume a misaligned spinal position for extended periods aggravating musculoskeletal pain and producing an undesirable cycle of pain and insomnia.
Many pillow-type support devices have been devised to address musculoskeletal pain. Some of these are designed to assist the user in maintaining a healthful posture; some are designed for the waking hours, as for example when sitting or standing, while others are designed to cradle or restrict the movement of a sleeper while in a supine or side laying position.
Currently, specialty pillows (e.g. cervical support pillows and orthopedic pillows) designed as sleep aids fall into three basic categories: wedge pillows, body pillows and multi-part pillows. The most prevalent of the wedge pillows are the so called cervical pillows comprising a contoured body constructed of foam which is placed under the user's head and neck. While stabilization of the cervical spine has obvious advantages, and may help with neck and shoulder pain, claims that these devices may assist with lower lumbar pain are questionable because they do not inhibit the user from twisting the lumbar-thoracic region during sleep. Additionally, many of these cervical pillows are constructed solely of so-called memory foam (MF), which while suitable for neck support, does not provide the resistance necessary to support the shoulder or thoracic region. Because cervical pillows result in no load changes in the shoulder and back region, the spine may still be misaligned.
Body pillows are designed to reside under more than one region, such as U.S. Pat. No. 7,310,840 to Rubio that supports the head, neck, thorax and lumbar regions.
Multi-part pillows are more complex in design and frequently involve detachable sub-units. Although the aforementioned classes of pillow may work well for their intended purpose, none adequately address the needs of the side sleeper: proper spinal alignment and comfort.
Because a side sleeping position is considered helpful for persons desiring to take pressure off the spine, it follows that what is needed is a device that will assist a person in maintaining a side sleeping position by mediating between the lumbar and cervical regions by stabilizing the thoracic region. Such a device would habituate the user to maintaining a healthful sleeping posture by providing optimal support for the lumbar-thoracic region, and over time relieving some of the pain associated with musculoskeletal strain.
An ideal therapeutic support to promote comfortable sleep and posture would have a number of characteristics: It would provide comfort and promote proper alignment of the spinal column, help the sleeper to reduce the frequency of positional changes during sleep due to discomfort, would be useable with a conventional fiber filled head pillow, specialty pillow or any cervical pillow favored by the user without negating the therapeutic effect, and would resist morphological changes due to compression over time.